The Apple Music Festival will be streamed straight to the Apple Music app

As if announcing Pharrell, One Direction, Disclosure and Florence + The Machine as the headline acts for this year's Apple Music Festival wasn't enough to cause stampeding crowds, Apple has also announced that you'll have access to exclusive backstage and additional footage through its music streaming platform.

The festival will be streamed live through Apple's Beats 1 radio station, whilst any extra content will be available on Apple Music Connect - where artists can share lyrics, photos, videos and even brand new songs with their fans.

Apple has already attracted 11 million users to Apple Music since its release, but with the intial three-month free trial period is still underway we're yet to see how many of these people stick around once the monthly payments begin. Apple renaming the iTunes Festival helps continue the marketing push behind its streaming service - to give people as many reasons as possible to want to choose it over its main competitors Spotify and Tidal. If you're struggling to choose between the three services, we did a comparison that you can check out here.

The event will be held over ten nights at London's famous Roundhouse venue this year - quite a drop from the thirty it had taken up for the six previous years. There have only been four acts confirmed (albeit big-name ones), so if none of them tickles your fancy there's still six more chances that Apple might announce someone you consider worth going to see.

Now if only Apple would bring this festival on an international tour... somewhere closer to home perhaps?